Rolling across a bridge in Dutchess County, with your spouse at your side and the kids in the back, how often do you wonder: How safe is this bridge?

In Dutchess County, 156 of 333 bridges, or 47 percent, are in need of repairs, according to a Poughkeepsie Journal analysis of the New York State Highway bridge data collected through Aug. 31. These issues range from rusting beams to sidewalk improvement.

In Ulster County, 192 of 385 bridges, or 50 percent, also fall in to this category — one that marks a bridge deficient if it has a rating under five.

While the state provides ratings for thousands of bridges across New York, the numbers aren’t the sole indicator on whether a bridge should be closed. Officials said the number of vehicles that cross the bridge, the particular structural issues, and what needs to be done to fix it determine its closure. Officials say that with limited funds each year for maintenance, they must balance the cost of repairs against the need for the bridge. Repairing a bridge can be a costly project requiring a municipality to borrow the money. For some towns, the solution is to reduce the use of the span or close it.

Indeed, Dan Budd, a Linden Avenue resident in the Town of Red Hook, crossed a bridge that carried a rating below five — the Linden Avenue Bridge — for over two years. In July 2013, it was posted with a three-ton weight restriction, which Budd said his pick-up truck narrowly passed. At the time the rating was 3.73.

“I was not concerned before” when they posted the weight limit, he said. “They don’t take any chances.”

Dutchess County Department of Public Works Deputy Commissioner Robert Balkind said the Linden Avenue Bridge was first cited by the state in 2013 for having structural issues due to rusting steel beams, so they restricted the weight of vehicles crossing it to a maximum of three tons.

Linden Avenue Bridge had 3,144 cars crossing it daily in 2013.

It wasn’t until this past July that inspectors determined the beams had rusted to the point where it was a safety hazard to keep the bridge open. The rating was 3.47 as of Aug. 31, a rating that is higher than two other bridges in the county that remain open.

“This is not a quick fix,” Balkind said they determined. “This is going to be a substantially big project. We immediately began the process of hiring an engineering firm to design and replace the bridge.”

Despite Linden Avenue resident Barbara Zelie having to add five to 10 minutes to her commute into the village, she said her family is enjoying the quiet the closed bridge — just a couple hundred feet from their home — has brought.

“The morning commuters and people out in the evening…all that traffic is gone. We wouldn’t mind having it this way permanently,” she said.

Zelie said she wasn’t worried about the safety of the bridge since vehicles that exceeded the weight limit heed the restriction and turn around.

“I really think that to the best of [public works officials’] understanding it was safe for cars to cross,” she said.

The “deficient” label is given by the state when the condition rating is below five, on a scale from one to seven. Gina DiSarro, public information officer for the state transportation department in the Hudson Valley, said in an email this means the bridge needs maintenance or rehabilitation to make it fully functioning again, but doesn’t mean it’s unsafe.

Typically, state officials said they send inspectors biannually to check on almost all of the more than 14,000 bridges throughout the state. Inspections increase to annually when a bridge is “flagged” for a deficiency, officials said. The state transportation department’s website states 94 percent of highway bridges are inspected by them, however, tolling authorities and commissions are responsible for their own inspections and must submit them to the department.

Local public works officials say they try to stay on top of structural or safety issues through proper maintenance and future capital projects to improve infrastructure before the state marks a bridge as a safety concern. However, little funding is budgeted annually for road and bridge maintenance, and larger, more costly projects are often bonded, officials say.

For example, in Dutchess County, Balkind said $343,000 was budgeted this year for bridge maintenance. The majority goes to paying the five county staffers on the bridge maintenance crew that do such work as waterproofing steel beams, fixing signs, and repairing concrete. This leaves roughly $50,000 for the actual supplies needed for the work, he said.

“It’s nothing, that’s why all we can do is the little stuff,” he said.

If communities were to budget larger ticket repairs, it would require an increase in the tax levy, Balkind said. This leaves public works officials struggling to stay ahead.

“We’ll never keep up, but we’re going to try,” Balkind said. “It’s a big burden. It’s a big cost to the taxpayers.”

A balancing act

An existing detour involving the Linden Avenue Bridge in Red Hook will remain in place while the bridge is replaced.(Photo: Journal file photo)

Capital projects for bridge repair and rehabilitation are rarely line items in a community’s budget. Instead, these pricey projects are bonded, local officials said. It becomes a balancing act of considering the cost of improvements, the frequency of a bridge’s use, and the extent of the damage to determine what repairs or replacement will occur, public works officials say.

In Ulster County, the focus has been placed on improving the county's infrastructure, said Bob Sudlow, deputy executive for operations and public safety in the county's executive office. This year County Executive Mike Hein budgeted $15 million, he said.

"The county executive is proposing another $15 million in 2016," Sudlow said. "We're really ramping up through the county executive's initiative. In reducing our expenditures and bringing down our overall cost of government, we're able to invest it in building a better Ulster County."

The county still must bond for funding some of these capital projects, however, Sudlow said. Some funding comes from the state and federal government.

Balkind said $8.4 million was budgeted this year for highway and bridge improvement projects in Dutchess County. The county received $3.2 million from the state’s Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS), bringing the total cost to the county down to $5.2 million.

“What we do is sort the bridges by [state] condition rating, and then we sort of have the worst to the best,” Balkind said of how he addresses bridge work in Dutchess County. “Then we sort those bridges by traffic volume.”

The state takes a seemingly similar approach. DiSarro said the capital program is a “balanced mix of projects and addresses maintenance, rehabilitation and replacement of bridges.

Selection is based on the evolving bridge conditions, combining engineering and financial considerations to select and prioritize work in each category,” she added.

New York state budgeted $3.7 billion this year for the state transportation department's capital program, which includes rehabilitation and construction for highways and bridges, according to state Division of the Budget officials. An additional roughly $371 million was budgeted for the 2015-16 year for preventative maintenance, said Morris Peters, public information officer for the budget office. However, he said in an email about $131 million of that is payroll alone.

It's not always easy for officials to make those decisions, as evidenced in Hyde Park where in 2013 an Article 78 was filed by a local resident in an attempt to compel the town to "repair and reopen" the Dock Street Bridge.

While the town wants it repaired, Town Supervisor Aileen Rohr said it'll cost nearly $1 million. The bridge also doesn't serve many users, she added.

Even though the bridge’s walls split ownership with the National Park Service and a private owner, Rohr said repairs are the town’s responsibility. A July 2015 state Supreme Court Appellate Division decision affirms that the town should take “all measures” to repair the bridge, but that the suggestion was “purely advisory" and the courts cannot "compel" the town to make the repairs. Town officials said they have been investigating grants to help fund the project, but haven’t been awarded anything.

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The Dock Street Bridge in Hyde Park, which is currently closed. (Photo: Alex H. Wagner/Poughkeepsie Journal)

“It connects River Road with the [Vanderbilt] mansion and one other property, so it’s difficult to justify that type of cost,” Rohr said. “We are looking forward to working with the National Park Service with the hope that they can obtain federal funding for the bridge.”

Sarah Olson, superintendent for Roosevelt-Vanderbilt-Van Buren National Historic Sites, said the Dock Street Bridge was used by park administration and one private owner. She added it also is part of the Hyde Park Trail, but is not used to access the historic site itself. The main entrance to the mansion is by way of White Street bridge off of Route 9.

“We would much rather have it open because it would be easier for our administration use, and the trail is important and we can’t open it now for that,” Olson said. “It’s a beautiful historic bridge that we’d love to restore as much for its character as anything else.”

Keeping up with up-keep

Local governments often find it easy to cut funding of maintenance of public roads and bridges, officials say, which doesn't immediately show the repercussions.

"When one forgets or one does not maintain an active maintenance of doing the required and routine [work], you end up with a scenario that we have not only here in New York, but everywhere: a crumbling infrastructure," Sudlow said.

But some localities have taken a proactive approach.

Ulster County has a strong emphasis on bridge maintenance. Sudlow said maintenance is part of the $35 million operating budget for county's Department of Public Works. He said $4.9 million is for the road machinery fund, $1.1 million for emergency repairs and $312,000 for materials.

"One of the things that the county executive here has focused on is having our bridge crew be very active and proactive on staying on our easier and shorter repairs, but then having a plan on the bridge repairs," Sudlow said.

Hyde Park Highway Superintendent Walter Doyle said when he first took office in 1998 he made it a priority to replace all the bridges in the town.

"At that time we just had a lot of issues with our bridges because no work was ever done previous to that," he said. "They're basically all new, there isn't much maintenance anymore."

Town officials said roughly $1,000 is budgeted for maintenance each year now that most of them have been replaced.

Officials said communities can only afford what taxpayers are willing to shoulder.

Bridges are "hugely important for quality of life and hugely important for economic viability." Balkind said. "Without them there is no commerce, no business...people can’t get to and from work. You really can’t function in society without them."

Go to PoughkeepsieJournal.com to use a searchable database to check the ratings of bridges in Dutchess and Ulster counties.

Capital projects v. maintenance

Many local highway officials said little money is budgeted for maintenance on bridges and roads, and when it comes to larger projects, they must be bonded. Here’s a look at some capital project costs versus maintenance budgets:

Maintenance budget: $4.9 million for road machinery, $1.1 million for emergency repairs and $312,000 for materials (part of operating budget)

New York State Department of Transportation

Capital project costs: $3.7 billion in 2015-16 (budgeted)

Maintenance budget: About $240 million in 2015-16 after payroll costs ($371 million before)

Source: Robert Balkind, Dutchess County Department of Public Works deputy commissioner; Bob Sudlow, deputy executive for operations and public safety within the Ulster County; and Morris Peters, public information officer for the state Division of the Budget

State of bridges in Dutchess County

Considered “deficient”: 159

Total: 333

State of bridges in Ulster County

Considered “deficient”: 192

Total: 385

Source: Robert Balkind, Dutchess County Department of Public Works deputy commissioner and Bob Sudlow, deputy executive for operations and public safety within the Ulster County

The 10 worst safety-rated bridges in Dutchess County

1. County Road 72 over Swallow Stream in Pleasant Valley: 3.33

2. Scism Road over White Clay Kill in the Town of Red Hook: 3.42

3. Linden Avenue Bridge over Saw Kill in the Town of Red Hook: 3.47

4. Park Entrance Road over a railroad crossing in the Town of Hyde Park: 3.67

5. A bridge in Salt Point over Little Wappinger Creek in Pleasant Valley: 3.7

6. Mill Lane over an unnamed creek in Pleasant Valley: 3.79

7. Mill Road over Landsman Kill in the Town of Rhinebeck: 3.88

8. Cold Spring Road over Wappinger Creek in the Town of Stanford: 3.9

9. Emans Road over Jackson Creek in the Town of La Grange: 3.91

10. Washington Street over Fall Kill Creek in the City of Poughkeepsie: 3.91

Source: New York State Department of Transportation

The 10 worst safety-ratedbridges in Ulster County

1. Greenkill Avenue over Broadway Route 28 in the City of Kingston: 3.14

2. Mill Brook Road over Belle Ayr Brook in the Town of Hardenburgh: 3.27

3. A bridge in the Town of Warwarsing over Rondout Creek: 3.38

4. Old Route 209 over Kripplebush Creek in the Town of Marbletown: 3.53

5. Wurts Street over Dock Street in the City of Kingston: 3.64

6. County Road 31 over Sawkill Creek in the Town of Ulster: 3.65

7. County Road 46 over Rondout Creek in the Town of Denning: 3.67

8. Clinton Avenue over North Gully in the Village of Ellenville: 3.7

9. Peekamoose Road over Buttermilk Falls in the Town of Denning: 3.75

10. County Road 18 over Wallkill River in the Town of Shawangunk: 3.76